Comics Extravaganza - Pow Bang Smash!

[TheLastBaron]

Has anyone read My Friend Dahmer?  I think it's coming up soon on my list of graphic novels to get (not a real list, just a mental collection of books I want to get around to picking up at some point).

[tberton]

I haven't read it, but I saw the author speak at TCAF this year and now I really want to read it.

[Tanukitsune]

I love how KS is making all these comics and anthologies possible, but... there are some that Kickstart their comic issue by issue. That seems like going a bit far. :|

[miffy495]

Has anyone read My Friend Dahmer?  I think it's coming up soon on my list of graphic novels to get (not a real list, just a mental collection of books I want to get around to picking up at some point).

 

I have not, but my girlfriend loved it. It's on my "to read soon" pile, as a result.

[tegan]

I picked up some comics today! Atom Cat and Unico, both by Osamu Tezuka. I haven't touched either of them yet, but I'm always up for Tezuka. I'm particularly impressed with Unico being four hundred pages in really gorgeous full-colour. Every panel goes right off to the edge of the page and the result is beautiful. It's totally unheard of for manga to have this much colour work.

 

I also took a good long look at Wandering Son, which it looks like is being released as really nice large hardcover volumes right now. I read a little of it as a scanlation ages ago; and while it was an amateur translation it seemed like a very sincere, fair, interesting look at an LGBT story.

[syntheticgerbil]

Oh there's another comics thread. I guess I never go to this forum because I suck at reading. I should read more comics as my recommendations are pretty much the exact same as the other thread so far and I mostly just flip through art and animation books these days. I tend to read comics based on the art and usually only if the artist writes it. Just feels more personal that way.

 

Lately I've only read two more Goon TPBs that I have not read for years even though they've been sitting around. Still haven't gotten to Chinatown, which is supposed to be the greatest. The comic tends to be a strange mix. Half are really base humor stories I really don't care for as they are too gruesome and violent but not for very good comedic effect (unlike comics like Scud or Evan Dorkin's work in general), but the other half are really engaging character stories I get engrossed in. Hopefully this gets a bit more balanced as it goes along, but I've read about 6 TPBs now, 1-5 and 0. The art is always great though.

 

I also read Black Cherry by Doug TenNapel, but like mostly everything I've read by him so far except for Gear and Creature Tech, the story set up is nice but it just ends up feeling stupid and rushed near the end.

 

I did also reread all the Malinky Robot stories in the newer TPB this year. Everyone really needs to read this comic, I can't stress enough how great it is. So simple and beautiful, but lots of heart within. The Stinky Fish Blues story goes on a Sunday newspaper extravaganza that tells a tragic story. Very medium pushing in my opinion.

[tegan]

I've been reading comics again, for what feels like the first time in ages! Here's what I've been reading!

 

 

 

 

Atomcat by Osamu Tezuka is fucking weird. It's a short series in which a boy adopts a kitten which, after being accidentally run over by their car, is granted all the powers of Astro Boy by a pair of well-meaning but dense aliens. Each chapter is pretty much completely unrelated to every other chapter, which would be a lot less egregious if it weren't just seven chapters long with no closure to speak of. It's still good, but it's like reading an incredibly strange prototype for something that never quite came to fruition.

 

I'm two chapters into Unico right now (three if you count the prologue), also by Tezuka, and it's a significant step up. It's tonally fairly similar to the groundbreaking Princess Knight, filled with fairytale melodrama, but rather than the step-by-step narrative of Princess Knight or the disconnected incidents of Atomcat, Unico's main narrative hook is to tell small but fleshed out stories that mirror each other in theme and tone with only one or two characters connecting them. It's very similar to Tezuka's masterwork Phoenix; but more fantastical, and clearly skewed at younger female readers. The big issue when this edition of Unico was first pitched was the colour printing, and it looks really, really good, occasionally spectacular. I have only two minor issues thus far: text sometimes gets dangerously close to the center of the (obscenely thick, very expensive and nicely-produced) book and I don't want to risk cracking the spine by opening it too far; and it seems odd that the customary disclaimer about use of racial depictions in Tezuka's era that usually has no relevance to the story at hand is absent from Unico, whose first chapter is about the relationship between a Native American boy and a European settler girl. It's not particularly objectionable, but why put it in Atomcat and not this?

 

I also picked up the first volume of Wandering Son by Takako Shimura today with some store credit I had. I haven't read this particular translation yet, but I read a few chapters from an early scanlation a few years back. I remember discussing LGBT themes in anime and manga with a friend years ago where they summarized the situation as "Japan is perfectly fine with having gay people in cartoons, because as far as Japan is concerned gay people are fictitious." It's proven to be a frustratingly valid statement; so I found Wandering Son -which primarily concerns itself with a pair of transgender schoolchildren; refreshingly fair- sympathetic, and entertaining. I'm really excited about reading this professional translation to see if that aspect still shines through. I might even have to grab the rest of the set if it's as good as I remember it being.

[tegan]

Man, Unico is unexpectedly depressing. I finished it just now. I really appreciate it when kids' material ends on a sad note though.

[tegan]

So I read the first volume of Wandering Son today and liked it so much that I immediately bought the next three.

[TheLastBaron]

http://www.vertigocomics.com/blog/2013/07/12/art-spotlight-on-trillium-1-by-jeff-lemire-0#1

 

So stoked for this

[TheLastBaron]

http://ifanboy.com/articles/and-the-2013-eisner-award-winners-are/

 

This years Eisners are out.  Lot's of indie love, Saga seems to be the biggest winner this year which is no surprise. 

[Tanukitsune]

Oh, I just got one of the winner is a recent Comixology sale, I guess they were on sale because he was nominated? Either way, King City was pretty rad, it has cats with super powers, nuff said!

[tegan]

King City kept going? I remember finding it when it was new years ago, but the creator was being screwed over by Tokyopop and basically wasn't allowed to keep making his own comic.

[TheLastBaron]

King City kept going? I remember finding it when it was new years ago, but the creator was being screwed over by Tokyopop and basically wasn't allowed to keep making his own comic.

 

Image picked it up and reprinted all the issues in a single trade last year so it qualified for the reprint category.

[Nachimir]

Yeah, King City found an outlet and was reprinted as larger individual issues and then a collected volume. It was brilliant, one of the few things I've collected as issues.

 

One of the problems with its first run was apparently that the small page size Tokyopop went with screwed over a lot of the tiny details Brandon Graham puts in. He makes scenes feel quite empty while actually packing in a lot of stuff to notice; it's cyberpunk, but feels like a lazy suburb rather than a metropolis.

[Tanukitsune]

Oh man, I had completely forgotten about the Tokyopop thing, they died without warning and screwed over a lot of artist, right?

[tegan]

This was before that. Sometime in like 2008 or so Tokyopop had made huge cuts to their line of original graphic novels (as opposed to their translations) and decided not to release any more of King City, but Tokyopop had an infamously terrible contract system that meant that the creators had no rights to their own work, forfeited their legal rights and were only allowed to solve disputes with Tokyopop by showing up in LA and visiting a private company called JAM, etc.

 

““MORAL RIGHTS” AND YOUR CREDIT
“Moral rights” is a fancy term (the French thought it up) that basically has to do with having your name attached to your creation (your credit!) and the right to approve or disapprove certain changes to your creation. Of course, we want you to get credit for your creation, and we want to work with you in case there are changes, but we want to do so under the terms in this pact instead of under fancy French idea. So, in order for us to adapt the Manga Pilot for different media, and to determine how we should include your credit in tough situations, you agree to give up any “moral rights” you might have.”

 

(actual quote from a Tokyopop contract).

I remember King City being a big casualty when they closed the branch because the dude wasn't allowed to revive it in any form.

[Tanukitsune]

Well, since it's out on sale again, I assume he got his rights back, right?

[TheLastBaron]

I've been reading Strangers in Paradise.  I'm not very far in, I just finished the first 3 issue series and issue one of the next one, but so far it's really good and the art is amazing.

[tegan]

Oh man, I just found out today that Drawn and Quarterly just realized the first ever English edition of Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitaro, as just plain Kitaro. It's an absurdly long-lived (as in, created in 1959 and still relevant) Japanese series about weird Japanese ghosts and stuff. It's basically all characters designed in that late-fifties-early-sixties era where manga characters were really super cartoony, but coupled with gorgeous realistic backgrounds. It's basically tailor-made Tegan bait. What a time to be broke,

 

[tegan]

I know I shouldn't have, but I made an amazon order for myself as a birthday gift. I ordered Kitaro and the Adventure Time: Marceline and the Scream Queens trade paperback.

[Tanukitsune]

Argh, The Adventure Time digital comic are region locked in my country for some reason, I really want to read them since I'm actually a fan of most of the people who worked on them.  

[Patters]

Arrghh I need to stop buying TPB/Omnibusses. 

 

I have and not read:

Y The last man (Collectors edition vol.2)

Batman Inc new 52 volume 1

Rasl volumes 3 and 4

Batman The Return of Bruce Wayne

Batman/Deathstroke

Thor Ultimate Collection

Walking Dead Issues 7-48

 

Send help

[Tanukitsune]

Thanks to Comixology and Dark Horse Digital I have a bit to read too, a few volumes of Atomic Robo, the entirety of Terry Moore's Echo and Blacksad. 

 

I'm sure there will be a Halloween sale and this list will grow even more.

[elmuerte]

I'm contemplating ordering premium Storm Collection of Don Lawrence. It's only like 550 euros for the complete set.

Don Lawrence work is absolutely amazing, and the Storm series is my favorite. It's nothing like to shitty comics like Rodent-man or Y-people.